del Toro calls the film a "very, very beautiful poem to giant monsters. Giant monsters versus giant robots. Twenty-five-story-high robots beating the crap out of 25-story-high monsters. We're trying to create a world in which the characters are real and how it would affect our world politically, how it would affect the landscape if creatures like this really came out of the sea, etc."

Idris Elba, Charlie Day and Charlie Hunnam also star in the project which began filming on Monday.